Henna Recipe for Body Art

One of the most popular questions we get is “how do you get dark henna?” and ”how do you mix your henna paste?”. Today we will share a simple photographic tutorial on how to make that perfect paste. With this recipe you can use the henna a few hours after mixing.

First of all you’ll need to start with a couple of specialty ingredients as well as some household ingredients.

The first is fresh henna powder. We use an Organic Rajasthani-grown henna in our mix. The stuff you get at the Indian market or the health food store may not be Body Art Quality, or it may be stale.

The second specialty ingredient is pure Essential Oil. Certain oils have compounds in them which help the henna get darker.

In this recipe we will be using 100 grams of henna (one packet), water to consistency, a tablespoon of sugar, and 30ml of essential oil.

Henna supplies for making henna paste

Step 1 – Mix your dry ingredients together

Henna and sugar ready to be mixed

Step 2 – Add water and mix until a very thick paste is formed. It will be a bit lumpy at this point. We are going to thin the henna out later.

It’s a bit lumpy and dry, but that’s ok!

Step 3 – Cover with some plastic wrap to let the mixture absorb the liquid. Eat some ice cream or check your email for 15 minutes or so.

Cover and let sit.

Step 4 – Add more water to thin the mixture a bit, and add your essential oils. Mix well. Cover again and let sit again. Do we really need another picture? No. Go check your email for or stalk your ex on Facebook for an hour or so.

stalker.

Step 5 – Mix your paste until all the lumps are gone. It should be kind of sticky and snotty. MMMmmmmmm.

Snotty awesomeness

Step 6 – Prepare your cones and put the henna paste in a pointy baggy such as a cake decorating bag or carrot bag

Henna ready to be coned

Step 7 – Fill your cones about 1/2 – 2/3 of the way full and tape shut

Filling cones the easy way!

100 grams of henna yields about 20 small cones of henna! Wow! If you don’t plan to use your henna on the same day, freeze the remaining cones and take them out as needed.

Henna all ready to go!

We hope you enjoyed this tutorial! Let us know what you think of our recipe!

Thanks for sharing this recipe! I love that this is a mix you can make and use in the same day. I also store my henna in cake decorating bags.and I would also love to see an equal design tutorial by you.

Hi Melissa! You could buy more cones, or make some yourself if you have anything mylar or cello laying around the house (think flower wrapping, empty chip bag). If you have a decorating bag that is handy for filling the cones, or ziploc bags work fine too. Thanks for your interest! Happy hennaing…

Darcy,
I can’t wait to try the recipe. I only have one question… every recipe I’ve ever read or tried before insist that an acid (lemon juice) is needed to release the dye. How does this recipe go through the same dye release? Just curious.:-)

Hi there! Well think about it this way, people used to just use the fresh leaves ground into a paste, no added ingredients whatsoever. In my opinion it is only moisture that is needed. I’ve left powder sitting out and as it absorbs ambient moisture over a few days I could see the dye “release” as the green powder took on a reddish brown hue. I think it was Hennapage that started the lemon trend as her page was the only web based source of info available in the west for quite a long time. Lots of info has convolutedly made its way into “fact” but really it’s erroneous. Millions of people have been mixing henna with nothing but water all over India, pakistan, Central Asia, Egypt, North Africa, etc etcetera for hundreds if not thousands of years.

Hey there, so using just henna with sugar and essential oils, works just as fine. I have done the lemon sugar and essential oil recipe, but sometimes the henna is very light or sometimes dark, depends on person. I now buy henna cones from professional henna artists, but I find them expensive as the cones are very thin and I do get lots of people asking me to do henna last minute. I have been told Henna releases dye at a very low PH hence why lemon juice is used? iv also done a recipe with tea (tea tamarind and cloves) it has worked but the difference is minor. I use to use jamila henna powder but now i mix jamila henna powder with Habiba henna powder. and i leave the henna overnight in the cupboard next to the cooker, is that safe? x

Hi Rabiah, thanks for your question. I’d need some more info to answer your question, for example what was the harvest date of your Yemeni henna, what did you mix it with, why did you only leave it on for an hour, did you wash it off or let it fall off, etc… in the meantime, please read up on some of my other articles on how to get a great stain: http://mehndiparadise.com/2012/06/24/how-to-get-dark-henna-in-4-easy-steps/